Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Are You Ready to Kill Some Orcs?

There is less than a day left before we storm through the dark portal and come face to face with a new orc threat. Like it or not, it seems like one again we will be pounding down the pig faced beasts. A few posts have popped up asking the question if we really see the orcs as a threat and it got me to thinking about it.

At face value a bunch of orcs are really of no real consequence. Been there, done that, been pretty much bored of it for ages now. The orcs have tried, and had limited success, taking over azeroth before and were beaten back by what was mostly an unprepared group of forces that were not even working as a team. These orcs were infused with fel magic, they were stronger, more brutal, and definitely more determined. So if we can, as an unorganized, unprepared group of people, beat back a stronger, more brutal orc threat, what exactly makes these orcs think they are anything more than a general annoyance.

The entire orc threat seems to be nothing more than a glorified quest line. One that should be finished in a small zone where most of the leaders are end of the quest line non elites, just kind of harder than the average orc, and then maybe we sum up the entire zone with a deadmines dungeon sort of thing where all the orcs we heard about while questing are in a 5 man dungeon and we kill them all along the way.

Seriously, this is exactly how I see the expansion. As something that would have been better served as a 5 man dungeon in the caverns of time or maybe even a three dungeon block at most. For good measure they could have also given us a small patch of land that involves them where we use a portal to get to and from it, like with the island of thunder.

I do not see the orcs as a threat, never have, never will. If the much more deadly fel orcs served as no threat, why should the weaker version do so? Remember, these are a group of people that were capable of being turned into slaves by the orges. The orges people, just think about how weak of a race you would have to be for that to happen.

Some people like to point out that the orcs have future technology from the blackfuse that garrosh bought back in time with him to use in this endeavor to become a stronger more aggressive force of conquerors. But lets face it, giving technology to orcs is like giving a typewriter to some monkeys. Given enough time they might manage to do something that resembles intelligence but mostly they will just spew out gibberish. Orcs do not have the intelligence of the goblins or gnomes, they do not have the tactical knowledge of the trolls, and they do not have the power of higher reasoning like the draenei. They are just, well, orcs. All they do is smash things with an axe, nothing more.

But then something popped into my mind. Something that would in fact make the orcs a threat, something I would have to use my imagination to build up because blizzard has done nothing to make us actually fear these orcs of lesser power than our own tame orcs. So here it is, my completely made up fantasy of why the orcs are something to be considered a threat. While you might not agree with my reasoning, at least give it a try, because unlike blizzard, I am actually going to try to give us a reason to fear them.

Remember I am taking many liberties here and making some stuff up as I am going along. I am just trying to create an orc threat that I can really accept as a threat, because lets face it, the threat blizzard presented to us is really nonexistent. Let me know what you think of my imagination in creating a real, true, orc threat.

There are 5 reasons to fear these orcs:

1) Numbers:
2) Brutality:
3) Desperation:
4) Faith:
5) Fear:

1) Numbers:

These orcs are large in numbers. While it might be true that we do not know exactly how many orcs there are we can safely assume there are a lot of them. It is quite possible that their could be more draenor orcs than there are combined forces of both factions that came over from azeroth. And being the orcs are basically animals and as I said are just the type that smash people with the axes, their numbers could very well be something to fear.

Even if the combined forces of both alliance and horde are in the range of 1000 trained, battle hardened, motivated individuals that are willing to work as a team against this threat, what chance to do they have if an army of 100,000 orcs come charging at them. Even if they can thin the pack and pick off a few orcs here and there even the vastly more prepared azeroth heroes would be quickly overwhelmed and be annihilated by the superior, even if only in numbers, orc forces.

There is a great strength in numbers, and these orcs have the numbers. Every orc is raised to be a fighter and all they ever do from birth to death is fight. While they might not be the smartest of fighters or the most tactical of fighters they do now how to swing an axe better than most. So with a number advantage as huge as the one they have, even if they all just come blindly swinging axes with no real military planning, the orcs will win based on numbers alone.

2) Brutality:

They might not be as strong as the orcs we know that were infused with the fel energy. They might never be able to match them in brute force. But what they can do is be brutal. They have no code of honor, they have no peaceful shamanistic ties. They have to part of their mind that can be reasoned with. They are not the orc we were lead to believe came from this time. Maybe that is because these orcs are not the ones that came from this time, in our past that is. These orcs are pure animals, no threads of humanity at all, just bloodlust.

These orcs, from what little we know of them, were always brutal. They were never peaceful. They did not need to drink blood as an excuse to kill, they killed because they wanted to kill. There is no right and wrong, just strength and steel.

Think of the story Maraad told us, where the orcs of our timeline murdered women and children and then look at our past and the past of the orcs we are going to visit and you will see the parallel. Sure our past have the blood drinking orcs, but this world has already shown us that these orcs are more brutal than our orcs were even after drinking the blood. So if our orcs could do it, these orcs would probably think of killing women and children as a fun family get together game like pin the tail on the donkey.

If these orcs had drank the blood it might be a really bad threat because they are more brutal, more without honor, more without morals than our orcs ever were. These orcs would rape and kill your wife in front of you then use dark magics to revive her just so they could do it all over again in front of you. And then when they were tried of torturing you like that, they would revive her once more and let her demon body rip you apart just for the fun of watching you scream in pain knowing the hell they put you through. They would laugh more at this then a stoned college student watching cheech and chong movies.

And these orcs that did that would be these orcs on one of their better days when they are trying to be nice. If there were a word that further stressed pure brutality, it would be used for these orcs and these orcs only.

3) Desperation:

These orcs are at a fork in the road, they have come from being slaves and they know that someone was trying to manipulate them into drinking the blood to turn them into slaves once again. So they stand at a point where they can either become slaves, fight for themselves, or become conquerors themselves, perhaps in an effort to get slaves of their own to fight the incoming threat they know will be coming.

They are desperate to be top dogs because they are tired of being beat on. They have always been the strongest, but not exactly the smartest, so they are using their strength and the motivation of their desperation, to try and become leaders instead of slaves once again. There is an old saying that the most dangerous people are the people that have nothing to lose, and right now the orcs see themselves in this very situation.

They have nothing to lose. If they choose to stand still, they could be over run, if they go back they could become slaves again, and if they move forward they could lose. But of all the options the only risk worth taking is the risk of moving forward. Going back or standing pat are not options, so in desperation they need to move forward and they have nothing to lose.

Always fear the person that is not afraid to die because there is no way you can ever win against them unless you kill them. They will keep coming at you. And knowing what is in the past and what could come to pass again if they do not move forward as conquerors, they really are in a no win situation and that makes them dangerous beyond dangerous.

4) Faith:

I am not sure how garrosh managed to do it but be has become a prophet for the orcs of draenor. He was able to convince grom that drinking the blood would be wrong, he was able to convince the other orcs to follow groms lead. He was able to get them to drop their individual clans and join as one large clan for the greater good. He positioned himself as a prophet for what could make the orcs a great race and his people believe him to be so and be capable of delivering on that promise.

In the real world more people have been killed in the name of religion than for any other reason. Why should the game world be any different? It shouldn't. Orcs are now following the lead that garrosh set. He offered them all this big vision of what could be, how great the orc empire would be, if only they would invade azeroth.

While we know he is doing it as much for revenge as he might be doing it because of some daddy issues they only see him as a gift from the heavens that has shown them the true path to a greater society and they are following the path he laid down for them with blind faith.

As long as you have people that believe in something so very strongly that they will do bad things, horrible things, dreadful things, incomprehensible things, all in an effort to move forward to what the master plan is, you have a force you can never win again. You can kill a person but you can never kill an idea. Ideas are eternal and faith, when placed wrongly, in those ideas can be deadly.

The prophet garrosh has come and laid down the path to the golden land and the orcs believe it, with complete faith, and they will do whatever they can to fulfill that prophecy. As we all know, fanatics that are following their prophet and have been radicalized, will do whatever it takes to get to the promise land.

Garrosh promised them glory, they believe him, and they will not stop, ever, until they push forth and kill every last person on azeroth like their prophet told them to do. If that is not scary enough for you, I don't know what could be. You would need to wipe out the entire race to cleanse any remnant of that sort of thinking. And that is the threat we face. Even if we kill all the adults now, their children will grow and and continue along the path the prophet garrosh set out for them with even greater zeal than their parents had fought for it because now they are also fighting for the honor of their fallen that died for this belief in the promise land. It will never end until the entire orcish race is eliminated from the face of draenor. There are no other options.

5) Fear:

What could these brutal, faith filled, desperate orcs in large numbers fear? Surely it is not the forces of azeroth because they are marching directly for us. Perhaps we need to go to the teachings of the prophet garrosh to find out what would make even these animals, these beasts, these killing machines, have their hearts filled with fear.

The prophet garrosh told them about the legion. How he saw with his own eyes as a world, much like this one, was sundered, torn apart piece by piece. He told them of the stories of how they enslaved the races high in strength and large in numbers and eliminated the races that could not serve them to the point of extinction, or near extinction. He mentioned that the visitors on this world, even if they had been living in a somewhat fragile peace with them, were being hunted by the legion and that one day a pit lord would come to enlist the assistance of the orcs to kill them all.

An offer of blood would be given and if they drank it they would gain amazing power, more than enough to kill each and every last draenei on the planet but that they too would become slaves to the legion, minions of their destruction. And if they did not accept this gift from the legion they too would be put on the list for elimination.

He told them that there was this land, a land he had been to, lush with land and trees, and filled with great power. A land where the legion attacked and lost, the only land were the legion ever attacked and lost. After bringing thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of races to extinction, destroying, sundering, reducing to dust thousands of planets within a blink of an eye and yet this one place remained safe. He told them of the promise land, one where they would be safe from the legion forever.

After the prophet laid down all they needed to know and the day came where this pit lord he mentioned arrived and offered them a gift that if they accepted they would need to exchange everything in return for that power, they were sure, the words of the prophet garrosh were true.

In their effort to not become slaves again and knowing there was a safe place to go to, they not only turned down the offer but they killed the messenger. They killed the pit lord that came to offer them power.

The prophet garrosh let them know, just like they would never stop hunting the draenei that got away, the legion would now never stop hunting them down. So there was only one thing they could do and that was to become conquerors themselves. They needed to conqueror the world that the prophet described as the promise land, the one land where the legion could not win.

So under the guise of being the strong ones and becoming conquerors when in fact they were running, out of fear, for their very lives from the burning legion that they knew would come down on them hard for rejecting the gift that was being bestowed upon them and killing the lord that offered it.

The orcs are like a cornered dog, scared and with nothing to lose. And a trapped animal is a dangerous one. Their fear that the burning legion would come for them coupled with the knowledge from their prophet that they could not beat them unless they were at the promise land gave them more than enough motivation to want to get there.

The orcs we are fighting are fighting for their very lives. They are fighting like a cornered dog, tooth and nail, just trying to get away from draenor, to save their own very lives and make it to the promise land. Their fear of the burning legion coming to exact revenge is greater than their desire to conquer, and that makes for a very dangerous combination with their strength and numbers.

Now, as I said, blizzard did not really do anything to make me believe the orcs where a threat, but I have tried my best, in my own mind, to create a world where I could see the orcs as a threat.

37 comments:

The original horde almost won the second war, and they would have if Guldan hadn't split his faction off right before the attack on Lorderan city to search for the tomb of Sargeras.

This Iron Horde is better prepared, in that they seem to have increased discipline, organization, production and supply lines. All things that win you a modern war in the real world. Thus the Iron Horde would defeat the forces of Azeroth in a war of attrition. If we let them keep coming through the portal they would wear us down. So they are a threat.

On the other hand, my character is about to lead a suicide squad through the portal to shut it down, and after completing his mission, will decide to defeat the Iron Horde himself, proceed to raise an army and conquer Draenor with very limited Azerothian support. So the Iron Horde is THAT much of a threat. They will get defeated by a small group of special forces heroes operating behind their lines and generally destorying everything they can. Because that's what us players do.

The original horde barely came close to winning against a completely unprepared and untested army. Sure it was their own breaking of ranks that made them lose, but if that group could barely come close to winning against an unprepared army and they are 1000 times more dangerous than this iron horde, well, you see where I am going with that. ;)

I do not see the iron horde as better prepared, nor as strong on an individual basis. I do see them having better numbers and being more savage however.

The iron horde would have absolutely no chance against the people of azeroth. We have beaten an aspect, hordes of scourge and their leader, the burning legion back from where they came, a titan, titan constructs, old gods, you name it. What are a bunch of orcs going to do. Tickle our feet so we laugh to death?

Jania could just leave a constant blizzard going at the dark portal and everything that walked through would die. We could bury the dark portal and nothing could come through. There are countless things we could do to stop them and they could do nothing about any of it.

They are absolutely no threat what so ever. They are not imposing, they are not scary and they are nothing more than a joke that I can not believe blizzard is trying to pass off as a threat.

Thus the reason I tried to create some home made back story for them, to make them feel like a threat. But even with that, they are still not much of a threat. A hell of a lot scarier yes, but still not really an imposing threat. Not as battle hardened as we are and with all we have done and who we have beat.

Now, as you said, the iron horde will be completely dismantled by a small group of heroes. That is exactly the type of threat they are. Something that should have been told in a 5 man dungeon in the caverns of time.

I don't think you are giving the original Horde enough credit. If I remember the timeline correctly there were 4 years between the First and Second wars. King Menethil was warned by Lothar about the orcish threat and had at least a year to build up the Alliance of Lordaeron and gather allies in the form of the Wildhammer dwarves and the elves of silvermoon. Also, the northern human kingdoms were much stronger then. Stormgarde was still a powerhouse. Kul Tiras had the most powerful navy in the world. The elves of Silvermoon weren't yet decimated by the scourge, so they were fully powered. The Alliance back then was a very powerful force, and the Orcish Horde pushed them back. Beat them at Tol Barad, Dun Morogh, Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad.

It gets a little fuzzy which of the later Orc missions from Warcraft 2 are canon and which arent. Like I dont think Mission 13, the sacking of Dalaran is Canon, and of course Lordaeron is not destroyed, but the Horde did lay siege to Lordaeron City before getting sidetracked.

Also, I would say the original Horde is more Savage than the Iron Horde by definition. The Iron Horde is too organized and militarized. Savage is defined as fierce, violent, uncontrolled. That is exactly what the bloodlust crazed original Horde was. The Iron Horde is savage compared to Thrall's Horde, but they do not approach the original Horde's savageness.

Also, you have to remember the forces of Azeroth are not at full strength. I think the general armies of the Alliance and Horde are significantly weaker than they were at the start of Wrath. That was the first real mobilization of the faction armies, and they have only suffered attrition of the ranks since then. It has been 4 years in game time since then, so thats not enough time for a new generation of soldier to mature. The heroes of the factions (us players) have gotten significantly stronger. But the small groups of us can't beat the Iron Horde in a pitched battle on our own. In past expansions players have required a major support network of quest givers, scouts, guards, repair people to be effective in the way we are. The Horde and Alliance are worn down, and can't provide that support any more, hence the suicide strike team.

I am just trying to help build up the threat of the Iron Horde, I agree with you that they arent as dangerous as past threats, but I don't think they are quite the pushovers you make them out to be.

I probably am not giving them enough credit. But I do still think the original horde was more of a threat than the iron horde could ever be.

I never played warcraft, any of them, so I can not speak from personally experience, only what I read.

I see where you are going with this line of thinking and it makes sense. I just have a real problem with seeing them as a real threat and I believe we, as a people, both horde and alliance, are a lot stronger than you are giving us credit for. Fighting each other has made us stronger. That is actually the reason 2 factions are a good thing, it makes us stronger because we are always prepared for all out war.

This also go to why I say we were not prepared for the second war. While the human armies with the dwarves and high (blood) elves were a well oiled fighting machine. No mater what numbers they had, they were not battle hardened like we are now.

Yeah, that is true about the battle experience of the current factions vs. the old alliance. But I think that only extends to the elites from the factions. That is us, the players, the heroes/champions. We are the ones that have survived through all the various threats, gained experience and better equipment. I think there are very few npcs that have kept up with our power creep. Nazgrim and Taylor are about the only two that come to mind.

I agree that the faction conflict makes both of them stronger, and I think that is the flaw in Wrathion's plan.

The faction conflict does have its good and bad parts however. The good of course being you become a better fighter, the bad being you lose people.

I agree that is the one big thing the black price really over looked. Azeroth has an elite fighting force because they fight. If they joined to be one super faction there would be no one to fight and their skills would fade from lack of proper use.

It is good to use it to our advantage, like against the lich king, and join forces, but the alliance and the horde need to stay enemies, for the sake of both of them and the world as we know it.

If I remember correctly, the orcs lost Second War because of all the infighting and betrayals from within. And after the war has ended blood haze has faded and most of the orcs fell into lethargy. Had there been no infighting, orcs would have probably won.

I have always argued that somewhere along the lines there was some sort of mistranslation of valour in orcish. Orcs do not have a chivalric notion of honour, because in all honesty that is stupid, and easiest way to get you killed. Hell, chivalric code of honour as whole was romanticised by many but rarely practises even throughout history. So in that respect, yes orcs do have honour. It's just that their honour is of pragmatic sort. Assist your brothers in arms, kill the enemy, never give up, and never surrender. To live by those words is to be honourable among orcs. It is a cultural difference.

If you're interested, you can read more on my take on orcish honour here: http://cogitationesastalnaris.blogspot.com/2014/04/masters-wisdoms-treatise-on-orcish.html

I can see that happening if they could have stayed together as a team. But I think it is in the orcs nature to try to aim for #1. That is and has always been their downfall. I don't think it is so much a betrayal but their culture. They do it because it is who they are.

It would happen to the iron horde too if the chance arose, but it seems like it won't because we will dismantle them well before that can happen.

ok, i am sure you have explain this before - but wtf, over. Are we going back in time? Or we in a paralle (sic) Azeroth? Or what! I am not understanding this add on unlike all the others.

And maybe I want to build my garriosn over a little to the left instead of the bug ridden area blizzard wants it? Yeah, that last line was added to make you laff, but I still don't undertand what this area is.

It is not really back in time. It is an alternate universe. Just so happens that their universe is some years behind ours, if you want to think of it that way. And they are trying to jump from theirs to ours, so we are trying to stop them.

Roo, my understanding is that we did not go back in time. We are current. It is Garrosh who went back in time about 30-35 years to the Draenor that we are visiting in WoD. He and the orcs then spent those 30-ish years joining forces and building the portal. When they catch up to our time line, they open the portal and rush through (pre-launch event). We stop them and then head through to destroy the portal from the other side (Tanaan Jungle intro). As we progress through WoD, our timeline matches that of Azeroth. We are simply in a different dimension/universe where Draenor never became Outland. Indeed, back in our universe, Outland is still busy floating in pieces.

Thanks Bee!!! Mucho better. Now, I understand it better, but still, why would Garrosh do such a thing? Did he get dropped on his little orcish head when he was a still a orc babe in arms (lol, get it, in arms)???

Oh well. I am sure most folks who read this blog have a lvl 100 or 3, but I am still at 92. It is intense. Now to re-read Grumps fort faq and try to understand if I fucked up or not with the 3 bldgs I made.

The Draenor we are visiting is about 31 years behind our timeline. Garrosh traveled into the past 35 years, was there about a year, then stopped the orcs from drinking the blood, and the Iron Horde was formed.

Then, Grom, Garrosh and the Iron Horde spent approximately 3 years building up their warmachine and constructing the dark portal. Somehow Garrosh was able to connect Draenor's dark portal "forward in time" to just after his trial. So it has been approximately 6 months in our time since Garrosh was defeated and put on trial, but the Garrosh we are facing on Draenor has lived 4-5 years, and is therefore 4-5 years older, since he escaped from his trial.

Its all pretty vague how Garrosh was able to do this. However, I am positive that Draenor is an alternate universe and Garrosh was not there for 30 years, until that Draenor caught up to our timeline.

Main evidence is: There are too many NPCs that are children on Draenor and adults in Our Azeroth. For instance, Nazgrel is a little kid on Draenor, but in Azeroth/Outland he is 30+ years old.

Ah, you are surely correct. So we have a gate that is connecting Draenor from 30 years ago with our present Azeroth. Both timelines are "current" for themselves, but slightly off-center in relation to each other.

Yeap, we jumped left to right, not back or forward, garrosh however jumped left to right and back. So their time and our time are at the same place in time just on alternate timelines.

Or at least that is how I like to see it.

Blizzard really went a little crazy with the story line. I am not sure most of the people could even come close to understanding it. They just need to make the game play so good people forget about the story. Which I do not think is really a great idea for an RPG.

In short, no, I was and am not ready. Still have to purchase the expansion and to be honest, with all the confusion normal at a launch, I really don't mind waiting a bit more to let it all settle down. Oh it is fun to watch guild chat and hear folks get excited and it was nice to notice the online numbers are up in guild, but I am in no rush to get to Draenor. If I wait a month or two get started on the next 10 levels, I won't have lost anything really. I am not planning on raiding nor am I going to PvP (very unlikely I suspect), so my end game is simply getting to 100 on multiple characters.

Now once I actually get to playing WoD, maybe my opinion of what I have read and heard about it will go up in estimation. Perhaps...maybe. Still only see 10 levels and hopes that the Garrison will be better than I expect as the only features to the game worth any money at all. The impact of the new character models is very minimal to my eyes, not that I have very good eyesight but still.

I still think the story line was a very unneeded addition. If as you maintain, it is Blizzard's way of preparing for a Burning Legion re-introduction, then they are likely going to totally screw it up and make a bloody mess of the whole thing. The introduction of the Burning Legion on the back end of this expansion will come either as one BL probing across the multiverse, destroying all in their way over every alternate universe discovered or it will come as the Burning Legion of this alternate dimension is now also attacking our Azeroth. Yea, a second BL would be devastating news, but evil oft mars evil comes into play and how would the BL of our reality take it to find their own doppelgangers hijacking their universe. The storyline proceeds to get stupider from this point on, so complicated and wrongly done that I will be done if it comes to pass. 100 levels might be a good place to stop anyway. I dunno...

No, my best guess is he took time off for the launch and has not come up for air yet...You have no idea how hard core Grumpy can be when he sets his mind to something. He talks about himself being just an average player, maybe a touch better as a hunter than many but nothing special. Trust me, he is something special and our guild is lucky indeed to have him.

Over the years, since 2005, we have been fortunate to have a string of star and even I dare say super star players at one class or another. Tis a major reason we are a very old guild. Grumpy is our current star (and I think Superstar) player, though we have some others who are arguably better at their roles than he is at his. One of our druids comes to mind on that..

One of my fondest wishes is to one day assemble all the players who have starred in their role for our guild. With those players, led by our grumpy host, I honestly think we could be a real contender. Sadly such a dream is near impossible to do as those players are scattered over time and space. In the mean time however, we still have Grumpy and that is enough to finish raids on time and with our own style.

That is about right. I took some time off and instead of complaining about all the down time, lag, and etc, that I knew would be fixed, I figured my time was better spent playing when I could instead of complaining about something I know (hoped) would be fixed soon.

It would be great to field an all star team from over the years. Have everyone that ever passed through when they were at the top of their game all at the same time. That would be a killer team.

Well, I'm not fan about the fact that this is supposed to be an orc addon. I've already been unhappy that they made the finale of the pandaren addon (which I enjoyed very much overall, I don't understand the complains about "lol pandas" at all. It was a beautifully made addon with very interesting raiding content) all about an orc instead of pandaria stuff. But right now WoD looks more like exploring Draenor and fighting different kinds of threats like the shadow council, psycho plant people and burning legion.

I dinged 100 less than 48 hours after release and "only" lost around 6 hours to queue time and bugs. I slept through peak hours and nerded through the nights with my SO, we had LOTS of fun. The levelling experience and most dungeons are AMAZING, we just breezed through without tiring. The art is beautifully made, i love Shadowmoon Valley and my Garrison.

Now I can't wait to push my twinks where I'll be taking more time actually paying attention to quest logs and details. But there's so much to do. I'm happy that we get an extra week to push the garrison, gear, finish questing etc before raiding starts.

It looks like Grumpy is having too much fun too, now that the servers are stable again and the queues gone. It was annoying as hell yes, and imho poor planning, but who'd have thought that WoW would hit the 10 mio subs again, and so quickly? They apologised with 5 days of game time which is quite enough if someone asks me.

I am glad you had some fun with it and "only" lost 6 hours. I know some people that lost more. So in the end that is not so bad.

The expansion looks good, no one can ever say blizzard can not make something look nice.

I worry about the replayability of it personally. I love to level alts and gear them up and there is no reasonable gear to be had without raiding and that will, if anything, completely ruin the expansion for me.

Sorry, but Grumpy specifically asked me to not give any identifying information in anything I write here. Not sure if any more than maybe one or two other guild members are even aware of this blog, and there might only be me for all I know.

His reasoning was the fact that he gets brutally honest sometimes in assessments in these entries and does not want to offend needlessly. Also there are times he has let his discouragement show where as that is something he does not do in guild as a general rule. A sharp eyed guildie would instantly spot us with all the references to in-game and in-guild that both Grumpy and I make, but even so, it is his blog, so I go by his rules.

I try to keep the conversation about the topic, not me. Right or wrong, it is always better to have blind. Otherwise every conversation or debate would turn into "you are a scrub because you can't even down this", or "you are an elitist because you do that" instead of the topic at hand.

I write to complain, comment and debate and that is what I like to keep conversations about.

Also, as anon said, I can keep what I say free and honest and never have to worry someone might stumble upon it. So no need to monitor my words. I can just say it as I see it.

Also, sometimes my posts are not always what is going on "right now". I often write about something that happened a month ago as "last night". It leaves me the freedom to tell the story when I want to, and not when it actually happened the moment it happened. If that makes any sense.

From the official forums it seems that there is plenty wrong with WoD esp. EU side (including the Alliance being shafted again in the story department http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15354965894 ) but your US PoV would be appreciated :)

BTW: the on-going launch issues EU side have caused BBC's Watchdog to take notice

https://twitter.com/BBCWatchdog/status/535538187847098368

If anything, I hope they press Blizz to reveal how much 'real' subs there actually are per region, as it seems a bit odd that the European Regions (including Russia and other , other language groups) would get disconnects, Server overloads etc. because of millions of Chinese returning for a micro-transaction here and there (remember, Blizz said that the MoP sub loss was primarily in China).